Book Cover Illustrations

Picking the right typeface for the lettering on a book cover can be key in getting sales as well as presenting a professional appearance to potential buyers. One of the mistakes many cover designers make (and especially self-publishing authors) is to select type that calls attention to itself. At first blush this seems a good [...]

For fun I often create book cover illustrations – without an actual story to illustrate. Oddly enough, these often eventually find a home or attract attention of a publisher or author needing a similar book cover illustration. Plus they’re fun to do. Here’s the latest, a science fiction book cover illustration, presently without a home. [...]

The Hubble telescope continues to inspire artists, bringing new styles and skies to science fiction as well as astronomy. I tried my hand at duplicating (in a rough way) some of the shots from Hubble, and then went ahead and created a “world” where such a sky might exist, adding a tiny fire and character [...]

Sometimes I do more than just a book cover illustration for a client, tackling the lettering and graphic design/layout of the cover as well. This calls for some different software tools (most of my illustration work is done with an elderly Corel Photo-Paint 8). Work often gets down to the level of not just kerning [...]